A Review of Youth Readiness in Smart Farming from A Structural Perspective

Abstract

Youths, in and beyond Malaysia, play a significant role in spurring the expansion of conventional agriculture to smart agriculture. Smart agriculture utilises modern technologies to produce and increase the quality and quantity of agricultural products in farms. Agriculture technology should be able to attract digitally savvy and educated youths, especially university students. However, the youths’ readiness to participate in both agriculture sectors is still a concern, especially from structural and external perspectives beyond the youth’s agency. Hence, key research questions arose: What are the factors influencing youth readiness? How do those factors influence the youths? A structural approach to review qualitatively 158 past studies (between 2015 until 2025) on smart farming or smart agriculture sourced from Web of Science, SCOPUS and Google Scholar is conducted deductively and sociologically. The objective of the review is to identify and analyse structural and external factors. The factors discovered as socio-cultural, institutional, organisational, economic, and smart technology in nature are concerned with availability, accessibility, adequacy and sustainability issues about youth participation in smart agriculture. Specifically, the factors are family background; social and moral support; social networks and social capital; social perceptions of youths as young farmers; youth talent and development strategies; finance and credit facilities; regulatory and policy support; agriculture extension services; and smart agriculture technology and information communication technology. An implication is more research on youth human capital in smart farming and improved design and planning of effective conventional and smart farming policies and programmes for sustainable youth human capital in agriculture, particularly in Malaysia.

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